


Our Collective Vision

by Amuly



Series: Marvel's 1872 [11]
Category: Marvel 616
Genre: 1872 (Marvel), Alternate Universe - Western, F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 16:58:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18855226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amuly/pseuds/Amuly
Summary: With Hercules and Howlett's arrival, Rescue is complete. And alone. The howling dark will consume the town if they don't find a way to fight it. Luckily, the newcomers in their midst have some idea on how to make best use of the drastic differences in the beliefs of the folks of Rescue, as defense against that Nothing which threatens to destroy their newfound community.





	Our Collective Vision

The dust clogged Tony's throat as he worked at the giant wheel. He coughed once, head turned only a degree from his work. But that cough brought its whole family with it, and Tony turned away from the wheel fully, hacking and coughing dry dust into his handkerchief. When it was finally over Tony grimaced to himself. Then he wrapped his handkerchief around his mouth and went back to work.

Dust stirred up on the road back to town. Under the noonday sun, Tony had nothing to fear from the wilds of the west. Still, he kept an eye on the little dust storm even as his hands worked at the wheel. Soon enough, the little cloud of dust came to a stop at the bottom of his ladder.

“No use in dry water wheel,” Ms. van Dyne’s voice hollered up at him.

Tony wiped the sweat from his brow, tugged the handkerchief from his mouth. Squinted down through the noonday sun at the petite woman scowling up at him.

“Ancient Chinese proverb?” Tony asked her.

“Modern common sense,” Ms. van Dyne glowered, tapping at her temple. Tony snorted and started down the ladder.

“I was trying to increase its efficiency. Get some output from it even if the river was a trickle.”

Ms. van Dyne kicked at the ground, tiny, broken feet kicking up clouds of dust. She spat at the furrow in the earth where there used to be a river. “No trickle. No point.”

Tony sighed as his boots hit the ground. He tugged his gloves off as he stared at the thirsty earth. “Common sense?”

“Ancient Chinese proverb,” Ms. van Dyne shot back.

Tony squinted up at the sun. Hours yet, before it disappears. Hours in which to work. But with no running water to do it with, which meant…

“You come out here for a reason, Ms. van Dyne?” Tony asked.

Ms. van Dyne nodded over her shoulder, back towards town. “Sheriff’s calling for you. If you want to heed that call.”

Giving the riverbed one last kick, Tony nodded. “Alright. Best do just that. Not even I can make a river out of dirt.” Something flickered in the corner of Tony's vision. He brushed it aside. “Tell the Sheriff I'm a-coming. Unless you were supposed to bring me to him yourself.”

Ms. van Dyne laughed and waved Tony away. “What, I look like Mr. Maximoff? I'm no pony express, Mr. Stark. Not your mom, either. You go when you want, I go when I want.” Ms. van Dyne turned back to town, spitting once on the river bed as she walked.

Flickers at the corner of Tony's vision again. Dark splotches coming for him. Tony brushed them aside again. Couldn't be less relevant. He had a town to save.

If only he could make lights from dirt.

* * *

 

The alarm raised before midnight. Tony was out of bed, scrambling for his pants before he realized Steve wasn’t in bed beside him. His blood went cold before he heard it: Sheriff Rogers, raising hell and bells as he raced through the town on Liberty.

“Folks at the town limits! Folks at the town limits! If you’ve got a weapon, grab it! Folks at town limits!”

Tony yanked on his suspenders, and then he was staring at his bedroom, hands clenching. If they were just regular folk, he sure as hell weren’t bringing a gun against them. And if they were this “Void” monster, well: guns sure as hell didn’t work, against that.

For the best, then.

Tony grabbed a lamp.

He galloped out to meet the Sheriff on his horse Jarvis. Sheriff Rogers caught sight of him, nodded, before turning back to his business of rousing the town. Tony trotted over to the edge of town and waited where the growing posse was meeting. Ms. Danvers sat easily on her horse, along with Mr. Barton, and Ms. Bishop alongside him.

“Steve.”

“Tony.”

Gloved fingers brushed, and Tony found himself steadying, his mind settling from the whirlwind of plans and dust and fear. Sheriff Rogers had that effect.

“What's the plan?”

Steve shrugged, leather jacket creaking with sweat and heat. A cloud of dust and Deputy Wilson pulled up alongside him, nodding.

“It’s two men, alone. On horseback.”

“We haven’t been able to get in or out for weeks,” Tony murmured. As if anyone could forget that. As if Pietro hadn’t tried, and nearly been… lost.

“Well. They sure got. In.” Deputy Wilson pointed out, eyebrows raising to the brim of his hat.

Sheriff Rogers clucked his tongue, wheeling his horse toward the end of town. “We won’t find anything out jawing each other’s ears off. Let’s go and see what we see.”

* * *

 

“Looks like a nice enough town you have here, Sheriff.” The man named Hercules smiled at Sheriff Rogers, though he put his horse between himself and his partner. Tony glanced at Steve. Between them passed a silent exchange. They knew these men. Maybe not these particular two, but they knew why they were here. Knew what mold they were cut from. Tony nodded, and Steve nodded back. Then he turned to the two men.

“We do our best with what we have. Let’s get you two inside, give your horses a rest.”

Inside Maximoff's tavern, Mr. Hercules Mulligan and Mr. James Howlett sat, big hands wrapped around a pair of mugs. Mr. Mulligan was smiling at all and sundry, while his companion, Mr. Howlett, was scowling something fierce. Tony snorted to himself. There was something about that Mr. Howlett he liked. Tony's eyes skittered over the colorful bottles that lined the back of Mrs. Maximoff's bar. Not now.

“So, you folks have anywhere we could get set up, or will we be spending the night in this bar?” Mr. Mulligan tipped his head at Mrs. Maximoff. “Not that it isn’t a fine establishment.”

There was a hesitation as everyone glanced around. Their eyes all somehow found their way to avoiding Ms. van Dyne. But she knew she was the only damned boardinghouse in town, so after a long moment she sighed and stepped forward.

“I'd be happy to put you in one of my rooms, but you'd have to double up with someone else. There's not an empty corner left in this town.”

Hercules cut in with his big smile. “Much obliged, ma’am. I could promise we would not take up much space, but, unfortunately that would be an obvious fib, wouldn’t it?”

Tony’s fingers itched. He glanced again at the bottles behind Mrs. Maximoff’s counter. The hostess herself made her way over to Tony, shaking her head.

“Have a glass of juice,” she offered. Tony turned his back on the townsfolk.

“I don’t want a fucking glass of juice,” he whispered at her. “I want a stiff drink.”

“We all need one,” Mrs. Maximoff agreed. But she still pulled a juice for Tony and set it in front of him. “But not now.”

“Witch,” Tony hissed.

“Yes?” Mrs. Maximoff smiled sweetly back. Tony turned back to the rest of the town. His fingers still itched. Steve and the strangers were talking about nothing.

“How’d you get in?” Tony spit out. Steve looked taken about, mouth opening and closing before finally snapping shut (though a muscle in his jaw clenched).

“Sorry, friend, I don’t take your meaning.”

“How’d you get in? To town? How’d you get into our town?” Tony pushed himself from his barstool, two steps towards Mr. Mulligan before Mrs. Danvers and Steve both ran up to him, holding him in place.

“Tony, please,” Steve murmured.

“We’re under siege and these two just come in out of the dark like it’s nothing, like-”

“Tony, _please_.”

Tony let himself be pressed back away Mrs. Maximoff’s counter, if only because he was so damned _tired_ he could barely put up a fight as it was. But he was at wit’s end—just like everyone else in their little town. Something had shifted, something had _happened_ tonight, and Tony needed to know what it was. If only to make sense of it, to take this one puzzle piece and add it to the greater picture, in the desperate hope that something, _anything_ would start to become clear.

“Thought this was a quarantine.”

The little one had spoken up. Mr. Howlett. He looked out at Tony from beneath his battered farmer’s hat.

“Quarantine’s keep people in.”

“And out,” Tony pointed out.

“But you’re asking how we got in. Like people have tried. And couldn’t.”

Tony shook Steve and Mrs. Danvers off him, grabbing at his juice. He wasn’t going to explain what he himself hardly understood to some strange man come out the dark.

“We have found ourselves under siege,” Sheriff Rogers began slowly. “Of a sorts. Our rivers are drying up. Our supplies cut off.”

“Who has you at siege?” Mr. Mulligan asked.

“We didn’t see anyone,” Mr. Howlett grunted. “Weren’t trying to sneak in.”

“Nothing.” Mr. Barton, from the far side of the bar. He spit. “A great whole pile of _nothing_.”

“It’s an unseen force,” Sheriff Rogers cut in. “As hard as that is to believe. A dark maleficence that has been slowly isolating our town from the outside world.”

“It kill one of my girls,” Ms. van Dyne bit out. “Do not think just because it is invisible, it is not real. It is very real. It is angry.”

Mr. Mulligan and Mr. Howlett shared a look with each other. Mr. Howlett snorted. “Seen weirder.” He dug back into his meal.

Mr. Mulligan sighed and looked around the town. “Well? You have this foe. What has been done about it?”

“What can be done?” Ms. Bishop murmured.

“My wife tried,” Mrs. Danvers told him. The skin around her eyes drew tight. “With old-world magic. She thought she could stop it. Force it to relinquish its grip on this town.”

Mr. Mulligan’s eyes flickered between Mrs. Danvers and Mrs. Maximoff, drawing the connection quickly. These sideshow acts were no dummies, at least.

“And that failed,” Mr. Mulligan finished for her. He stroked his thick auburn beard.

“It’s turning off my gaslamps. More every night,” Tony admitted.

“It _hates_ Mr. Stark,” Mrs. Maximoff told Mr. Mulligan. Tony scowled at her. As if they needed to be reminded of that. She shrugged apologetically. “What? It does.”

“It shrugged off old European magic, it despises New World know-how…” Mr. Mulligan mused. “Have you tried Oriental magics? I have heard they could be quite potent, in their own way.

Everyone looked to Ms. Van Dyne. When she noticed their attention she was taken aback. “What, you expect me to have some ancient Chinese secret? I am a seamstress, not a court magician.” She scowled and flipped open her fan, fluttering it under narrowed eyes. “Racists.”

The town erupted into arguing. Tony hopped over the counter and grabbed for the whiskey, shrugging Mrs. Maximoff off. “Nope, nope, I don’t want to hear it. It’s time,” he told her. She let his arm go. He must look horribly desperate. Well, good. He felt desperate.

Sheriff Rogers whistled, calling the town to order.

“No. That's not how this is going to go. Just about every one of us comes from someplace different than another. Some of us are from Europe, some from the orient. We got folks from every north, south, east, and west corner of these United States. About all of us came here separate. We brought our customs, languages, and traditions with us; our families are in every sort of configuration you might think. But you know what we all got in common?” Steve looked around the room, light eyes sparkling in the gaslamps of Maximoff’s. “We came here seeking rescue. And by God, I'm not going to let some creeping dark stop this town from living up to her name.”

“It’s the Injuns,” someone suggested, though Tony could never figure out who.

Mr. Barton perked up at that. He exchanged a nod with Mr. Maximoff. “What do you think?”

Mr. Maximoff shrugged slowly. “I encounter them, sometimes.” He waved a hand back and forth. “I not bother them, they not bother me… Sometimes they want, but, I am faster. Less and less do I see them, these days.”

Deputy Wilson clicked his tongue. “Government’s driving them onto smaller and smaller reservations. There’s hardly any left outside the piss-poor pieces of soil the government is leaving them with.”

“Could it be their old gods?” Mrs. Danvers suggested. “Vengeance of the land, or something?”

But her wife was already shaking her head. “No, no. This was older. Crueler. This was not a god of the Injun.”

Mr. Mulligan asked: “This thing: you called it Nothing?”

Mr. Barton and Ms. Bishop were nodding frantically, but Tony scowled and cut them off. “It _is_ something. Calling it nothing-”

“Excuse me, I misspoke,” Mr. Mulligan cut in. “You called it _a_ nothing.”

“To- Mr. Stark doesn’t much like that term,” Sheriff Rogers backed him up. Tony nodded at him, mustache twitching with the effort to hold back a smile.

“A Nothing can be something,” Mr. Mulligan pointed out. “What gets bigger the more you take away?”

“A hole,” Tony replied immediately. Mr. Mulligan grinned at him.

“Is nothing more deadly than poison?”

“A vacuum is,” Tony sighed. “But this wasn’t a _vacuum_ , it wasn’t a yawning space sucking up everything around it.”

“Kinda did,” Mrs. Danvers murmured, holding her wife close.

“Mr. Stark wanted to call it a void,” Sheriff Rogers offered.

Mr. Mulligan nodded slowly, turning it over in his mind. He smiled at Tony. “I don’t think you’re wrong, Mr. Stark. A void is an absence of a thing. And this union, well, we’re probably responsible for that absence.”

Sheriff Rogers straightened up, hackles raised. “How do you mean that, Mr. Mulligan?”

Mr. Mulligan grinned, tilted his hat at Sheriff Rogers. “Not meaning any offense, Sheriff. I served myself.”

Mr. Howlett pointed at himself. “Canadian.”

“Point being: the Injuns, well, we drove them on out of here, didn’t we? Put them into little self-contained areas. And now, between California and the Mississippi, we’ve got all this… absence.”

“A void,” Tony murmured, eyeing Mr. Mulligan. “A vacuum.”

Mr. Mulligan shrugged.

Deputy Wilson stepped forward. “But an absence of what? People? There’s people here now: _we’re_ here. And the Injuns, well, there were plenty of them, but not _that_ much a plenty. They didn’t fill up the whole damn Great Plains on their lonesome, even before we were here.”

“It’s not about population density, some mathematical proportion of person-to-hectare,” Mr. Mulligan insisted. “Gods take up more space than peoples.”

Tony rolled his eyes and leaned forward hard against the bar. He took a drink. “ _Gods_ ,” he sneered.

Mr. Mulligan sucked sharply at his teeth, eyeing Tony. “Well. That, or… something.”

Tony leaned over at Steve. He pressed one hand to the Sheriff’s elbow. “This is nonsense.”

“I don’t know, Tony-”

“You’re just going to let these carnie carpetbaggers tell us-”

“Well, hey now, we’re both carpetbaggers. And Mr. Barton’s a carnie.”

“-about _our_ problems? Make up some nonsense about _Injun gods_?”

Steve shook his head and leaned back. Tony settled down, waiting for Steve’s say-so. _He_ was the law in this town, after all. Not Tony.

“What’s your suggestion, Mr. Mulligan? State it plain,” Sheriff Rogers asked.

“You folk got a town preacher?” Mr. Howlett asked.

Everyone looked at Sheriff Rogers, who looked at Tony, who just snorted and laughed. Sheriff Rogers sighed.

“Not yet, no, sorry to say. We’re… all sorts, here. Not really enough of a demand for any particular denomination to set up shop.”

Mr. Howlett frowned. But Mr. Mulligan was smiling.

“Well, you hardly need a man of the cloth to have _belief_ now, don’t you?”

“Spoken like a Protestant,” Mrs. Danvers shot back, though she smiled to soften her words.

“Well I may be at that. Puritan, by family. Though I don’t ask denomination at the door when I pass by a church. Are you a Catholic, by my guess?”

“Aye,” Mrs. Danvers confirmed. She nodded at Sheriff Rogers. “Same as the Sheriff. We’re the only two.”

Mr. Mulligan tapped at his chin. “Well then. Why don’t we have a survey? I, Puritan, I suppose you could say, for wont of anything else. Two Catholics. Howlett here is a Jew.”

Sheriff Rogers blinked. Mr. Howlett scowled at him. “Problem?”

Sheriff Rogers shook his head. “All are welcome, in Rescue. That’s kinda the point.”

Mr. Mulligan pointed at Mrs. Maximoff. “And what about you, young lady? Catholic, like your wife.”

Mrs. Maximoff hesitated, hands fluttering at her dress. “My brother and I are gypsy. It’s an… assorted belief system.”

“She’s a witch,” Mr. Maximoff muttered. His gaze slid carelessly beneath his hat. “Old-country witchcraft. Little bit of everything. Saints and goddesses, prophets and herbs.”

“Gypsy-witch,” Mr. Mulligan said, like he was just ticking off something as mundane as Lutheran. He pointed at Deputy Wilson next. “And you, deputy.”

“Moslem,” Deputy Wilson replied. “As-salamu alaykum.”

“Alaykumu s-salam,” Mr. Mulligan replied back promptly. Deputy Wilson laughed sharp. “You pick up these things, traveling the country,” Mr. Mulligan explained.

“All sorts,” Mr. Howlett confirmed.

Mr. Mulligan pointed to Mr. Cage, Mr. Rand, and Mrs. Jones next. “Methodist,” Mr. Cage replied for the three of them.

“Confucianist,” Ms. Van Dyne offered. “It not practiced in church or temple. It more about ancestors, a mindset. Philosophy.”

“Is it something you believe in?” Mr. Mulligan prompted.

“Yes.”

“Then it counts.”

When he’d made it nearly around the room, the tally was nearly as long as there were citizens of the town. A few religions had more than one local practitioner—Catholicism, Methodism, four Episcopalians, two Anglicans and, their most-represented lot, ten whole Lutherans. But there was a long, long list of single-practiced religions. Mr. Howlett was their only Jew, Sam their only Moslem, and Ms. Van Dyne their only Confucianist. Mr. Maximoff settled on Eastern-Orthodox as a rough approximation of what major religion their gypsy tribe had practiced, though his sister couldn’t stake claim to something quite so ordinary. And then Mr. Mulligan turned to Tony.

“And you, Mr. Stark?”

Tony shook his head. His mouth was dry. He’d stepped out from behind the bar to stand with Steve, but now regretted it. Steve, good Catholic boy Steve, felt hot at his back, waiting.

“I don’t…” Tony tried to wet his lips. Failed. “I don’t believe in anything.”

A murmur, through the bar. Mr. Mulligan paid them no mind. He was still smiling.

“Nonsense. Everybody believes in something. What do you believe in, Mr. Stark?”

The answer came upon him unbidden and unwanted. But still it came. “Technology,” said Tony. “People. Myself. What I can build. What we can create, together.”

More murmuring. The townsfolk weren’t none pleased with such an answer. But Mr. Mulligan nodded, satisfied.

“A fine belief.”

Mr. Mulligan turned to the townsfolk. “Then how about this, for a try: we gather our beliefs. Our tokens, our rituals, our sacred objects and rites of prayer. I would bring my family Bible with me and David’s Psalms. My partner, Mr. Howlett, would recite the Kiddush. And so it goes, with whatever your belief.”

Sheriff Rogers was nodding. “I have my mother’s rosary, and the family Bible. I know the prayers from mass.”

Tony hesitated, looking around at the assembled townspeople. This was lunacy. Idiocy. They were going to try and _wish_ away some formless evil that was bent on destroying their town. _His_ town. That would kill them—had killed!—would kill again. And they thought they could destroy it with a wish and a prayer? Tony shook his head, drowning in his doubts.

Until a hand laid on his shoulder, firm and sure. Steve. There. Tony met his eyes.

“What do you need,” Steve asked him, voice hardly a murmur.

“I don’t-”

“You believe in us,” Steve reminded him. “You believe in this town. In what we create, together.” Steve nodded at the gathered townsfolk. “What do you need from us, to bring that belief with you? To make it manifest?”

“What are the rites of radical humanism?” Mr. Mulligan pressed, eyes twinkling.

“I would not even know where to start,” Tony grumbled.

Steve’s hand fluttered at Tony’s elbow, too prudish for a more explicit display of affection in front of the town; small gesture speaking loudly in the absence of his ability to give more. Tony’s heart clenched powerfully at the movement.

“I have my mother’s rosary,” Steve murmured, just for Tony to hear. “I have the Catholic prayers. I know what I need to do.” He shifted, nose just barely brushing Tony’s hair. “What do you need?”

Tony took a breath. Then two. Then he smiled, wise-aleck town drunk, loud-voiced blacksmith all rushing back. He was a builder. He was going to build something, by Jove.

“Well, then I need all of you. Anybody who has got a strong back and working arms. If this darkness wants to attack us, then goddamn it, we will turn off the dark.”

* * *

 

The gaslamps stayed on, somehow, in the weeks while they worked. If he was a believing sort of man, Tony might say the townfolks’ coming together was keeping the dark at bay. That the force of their can-do-manship was a physical thing to be reckoned with, somehow. But Tony wasn’t that sort of man. Instead he chalked it up to good luck and didn’t look it too hard in the face. Good luck always vanished when you did something foolish like look right at it.

The glass bulb in Tony’s hands exploded. Tony swore and dropped his hands, jumping backwards. From the other side of his lab one of Ms. van Dyne’s girls ran forward, tossing off her welding goggles. “Mr. Stark?”

Tony pushed himself up to his feet, wiping his gloved hands on his apron. He glanced over himself, then shoved up his own welding helmet.

“Ms. Rhodes. You realize when something explodes, you would be best served to keep your helmet _down_?”

Ms. Rhodes skin was too dark for Tony to catch a blush, but she lowered her eyes enough that Tony could read her embarrassment.

“Sorry, Mr. Stark. I just… sorry.”

Tony sighed and slipped his gloves off, slapping them together to shake any glass pieces from them. “It’s alright. Here: get a broom and clean this up.” He glanced up at his lab, mind already working. “I need to try again…”

“Mr. Stark?” Ms. Rhodes fumbled with the broom and dustpan, bent to her work. “What are you doing messing around with… these?” She nodded at the seemingly empty glass bulbs, one of which Tony had just exploded. “I thought your electric lamps were already fine and miraculous.”

“We need something better,” Tony told her, absently twirling the ends of his mustache. “We need something that will turn off the dark.”

* * *

 

He got it. A week later, he had it, and he had a team of girls from Ms. van Dyne mass-producing it for him. Sheriff Rogers came over one day, noonday sun shining bright down on Tony’s workshop as the girls worked. The Sheriff didn’t touch Tony, but he settled too close next to him on such a hot day. Tony was feeling so elated he reached out and grabbed the Sheriff’s beltloop, dragging him in until they were hip to him. Sheriff Rogers flushed, but smiled, too.

“You got something for us, Mr. Stark?”

“I surely do, Sheriff Rogers.”

Sheriff Rogers looked over the girls hard at work, eyes squinting against the bright sun. He nodded. “How much longer?”

“With the way these girls are working? A day, two.”

“Tomorrow night?”

The wind fell dead. The sun beat down without heat, world suddenly desaturated.

But Steve was still at his side. Steve was still warm. Tony trembled, and took solace in that.

“Tomorrow night,” Tony agreed. His throat clicked dryly. He couldn’t swallow.

* * *

 

Tony trotted his horse up and down the lines of townsfolk, checking them for empty hands and empty hearts. Those who had their own tokens with them—rosaries, prayer beads, bibles—didn’t need Tony’s brilliant lanterns. But some took one from Tony anyway. He had enough to outfit the whole town, and then some.

When there wasn’t a townsperson left who wanted a lantern but didn’t have one, Tony wheeled his horse wide in a last check of their perimeter net. Ms. Rhodes, along with a half-dozen other of Ms. van Dyne’s girls, were checking Tony’s lamps and installing new ones.

They worked in pairs.

Tony’s leather gloves cracked on the reins.

Ms. Rhodes caught sight of him and waved cheerily. Tony wanted to grab her hand, say _stop, no. Turn back. Stay safe, leave here. Leave me. Stay alive_.

Instead he trotted over and examined her handiwork. The lanterns were in the ground, copper wires running from one to the next in long, snake lines of glittering metal. Tony had ripped apart his house and every other building in town for enough copper to make the wires. He wasn’t sure if it would be enough. He hoped it would be enough. Had to believe it would be enough.

“Good work,” he managed to force out. “Get yourself in with the rest of them.”

“Mr. Stark? Can I have a lantern?”

Tony blinked. Then he handed over a lantern without a word. Ms. Rhodes smiled brightly at him. “Thanks Mr. Stark. See you soon.”

It was dusk. Tony ran up and down the line, checking and rechecking. Mrs. Danvers was doing her own check, gun slung over her shoulder, hat pushed back high on her head as she scanned the horizon line. They clasped hands once as they passed each other.

“All set?”

Mrs. Danvers hefted her gun. “As I’ll ever be. Helped Barton and Bishop set up some game traps earlier.” She patted her breast pocket. “Got Mom’s rosary and a Bible. Not the family one, but…”

“How ‘bout the wife?”

Mrs. Danvers’ lips pressed tight together, leather gloves creaking on her gun butt. “She’s doing what she does.”

“Got everything she needs?” Tony asked.

Mrs. Danvers nodded. “I tried talking her out of coming, but…”

“Course she’s coming.” Tony spat. “She’s from Rescue.”

Mrs. Danvers shook her head, though maybe a memory of a smile crossed her lips. “She is at that. She’s from Rescue.”

“You have her,” Tony reassured Mrs. Danvers. She cracked half a smile at him.

“No darkness monster is taking her from me. Not after everything I’ve fought to have her.”

That, Tony understood. They clasped hands once more and were off their separate directions. Checking their own protective circles, running through their own rituals.

Tony wasn’t sure how so much separateness was supposed to be a community. How so much dissension could form a cohesive attack against that great, yawning dark. But Mr. Mulligan believed in it, and it was the best idea they’d had in weeks.

Better to die on their feet, in the saddle. Faces forward, turned up to the wild, wooly west.

Better than starved out, cut off. Scared. Alone.

It was twilight. Tony compulsively checked the lamps in his saddlebags and felt so small. So foolish. How could a little trick of technology take on the great wilds of the west? The yawning emptiness of abandoned places, of faith drive out, of a people displaced and gone. A void of humanity, and Tony thought, what? A glass tube and stream of static shock would somehow push that back? _Tame_ it? Fill up the great, dark emptiness with, what? _Him_?

A hand dragging him from his horse. Tony knew that hand and he went with it in a daze. Sheriff Rogers pulled him down behind the Sherriff’s office, shoved him against the wall. Tony’s mouth was open and legs spread before Steve even tipped his hat back.

“ _Tony_ ,” Steve moaned into his mouth. Tony clung tight to Steve’s duster, tongue sliding over the Sheriff’s. Steve groaned, body tense. Tony’s wasn’t any better.

“Last night on earth, right?” Tony whispered into Steve’s ear when they broke apart to take a breath.

“It’s not,” Steve promised him. But his hands were desperate, his eyes painfully closed as he pressed his body close, close to Tony’s.

“Get inside. The monster can wait,” Tony whispered. Mostly because he wanted to forget the inevitable. He was a drunk: he wasn’t any good at delaying gratification.

But Sheriff Rogers was, as always, the better of the two of them. Oh, he kissed Tony right silly. His chin and mouth were pink with whisker-burn by the time he had his fill. But he did pull away, eventually. Tony was hard and limp against him, but Steve pressed their foreheads together, rolled them slowly. His breath was clean and fresh, warm even in the warm dusk air. He kissed Tony once, twice more. The another last one, just under his eye. Tony laughed, chasing those lips, and Steve was smiling.

Somehow it was fine. For five minutes, it was just fine.

And then it was back to the business of saving the town. Steve tugged Tony’s suspenders and shirt back into place, smoothing out the wrinkles (like he could).

“Perimeter set?”

“For all the good it’ll do,” Tony grumbled.

Steve shook him lightly. He reached up with one hand, combing his fingers through Tony’s hair.

“It’ll do good because you believe it’ll do good. So believe it.”

“What if I don’t?”

Steve didn’t even take that seriously. He clucked his tongue and held onto Tony’s suspenders. “You have to. Because you believe in me.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

Steve smiled. “And I believe in you.”

“Transitive property of belief? I don’t believe it works that way,” Tony pointed out. But somehow, it did. To hear that Steve believed in him, and Tony always, unerringly believed in Steve… Tony smiled. Steve smiled.

By Jove. This might just work.

“Where’s my lamp?”

Tony blinked slow up to Steve, mind too kiss-addled and stress-rattled to do him much good. Not that it had been doing him much good lately, what with mystical god-forces coming to bear on his small town of Rescue. Steve just smiled at him, sideburns blond and bright as the sun itself, in this artificial nighttime halo Tony had surrounded their town with.

“Your what?”

“My lamp.” Steve nodded over at Tony’s horse, Jarvis, whose saddlebags still had a few lamps left over.

“You’re Catholic.”

“I am. And I believe in you.”

Sheriff Rogers rode out of the town with a lamp in his saddlebags. Tony rode behind him, unable to stop looking at it.

What a wild, modern world they were barreling into. Whether any of them were ready or not.

Night fell. Barton and Bishop flanked either side of the townsfolk, bows in hand. Tony was in his place, at the front of the crowd with Sheriff Rogers. Mrs. Danvers was on Tony’s right, her wife on her other side. Deputy Wilson was on Sheriff Rogers’ left. Mr. Mulligan and Mr. Howlett were just behind Tony and Sheriff Rogers, with their big plans and new ideas. Tony swallowed.

There was no wind.

The crickets were silent.

A great, terrible nothingness spilled upon them. Darkness fell, heat seeping from the land. The tide of nothing rolled over them until the stars started to dim above their heads. Tony screamed silently, mind alight with the impossibility. You couldn’t put the stars out. Not the stars.

It was a new moon.

Tony clutched at his lamp.

It couldn’t work. It wouldn’t work.

Sheriff Rogers sat beside him, straight-backed. He held out his own lamp. He turned it on.

“ _Pater noster_ -” Sheriff Rogers began.

And in a line, the lamps came on. Tony pressed his with trembling fingers. Mrs. Danvers flicked on hers. Further down the line, Ms. Rhodes hers. Barton and Bishop theirs. Tony snapped the switch on his horse’s saddle, and the engine he’d been building in his workshop roared to life. The lamps around the town flickered, struggling. A weak little thread of light, but getting stronger, building in brightness.

At his side, Mrs. Danvers picked up the thread Sheriff Rogers had begun.

“- _qui est in caelis-_ ”

Behind him, Mr. Howlett’s gruff voice began the chant of that secretive, sacred tribe Tony had last heard in the big city, on a Friday night at dusk:

“ _Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha-olam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’ratza vanu_ -”

Deputy Wilson had dropped down from his horse, hands held up to his head. Tony watched as he bowed, then prostrated himself, rhythm of his prayers obvious even if Tony had never heard the strange language before: “ _Allahu akbar; Subhanarabb'iy-al-A 'la-_ ”

Ms. van Dyne was burning something, speaking in that foreign tongue of hers she’d had little reason to use in her years in Rescue. Mrs. Maximoff too, spoke in a strange tongue, though it was one heard about town more than Ms. van Dyne’s—a shared, secret language of siblings, that they happened to share with thousands others. Just not here. She stood up in her saddle, sacred plants burning between her fingers as she drew some ancient pagan symbols in the air before her. Tony thought he felt the darkness shudder. His lights flickered. Brighter?

Steve and Mrs. Danvers said the Lord’s prayer. Tony knew it well enough. His mother had said it dutifully, every Sunday, holding Tony’s doll-sized hand in her palm. The rhythm of the words, not even the words themselves, took Tony back to a dark church shot through with colored lights ( _the stained glass_ ), smell of incense as the priest swung the thurible down the aisle ( _nave_ ).

“- _Fiat voluntas tua_ ,

 _sicut in caelo, et in terra_ -”

But that was his mother’s beliefs. It wasn’t his own.

Tony’s hand trembled, lantern flickering in the great, yawning dark.

What belief did he have?

Ms. Rhodes, towards the end of the line. She was holding Tony’s lamp aloft, brandishing it like a sword in battle, and she Joan of Arc. At the same time, she chanted a simple prayer. But she shouted it, like it too, was a weapon: “I will fear no evil, for thou art with me! Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me!” She shook Tony’s lamp like it was selfsame staff of the Lord. Tony gripped his own lamp. The lights flickered brighter.

And then.

A voice in the dark.

( _The_ voice. Of _the_ dark.)

“ _Parlor tricks._ ”

Half the lamps went out. Tony growled and held his tighter.

Mrs. Maximoff screamed, then moaned. Her body jerked out of her saddle, pulled up to the night.

But Mrs. Danvers was ready, this time. Quick as a thought, she had her lasso out, and around her wife. She yanked hard, dragged Mrs. Maximoff right back into her lap. And then she pulled out a bottle of water and dropped it on Mrs. Maximoff’s head. Mrs. Maximoff shouted, then went limp.

 _“Et ne nos inducas in tentationem_ ,

 _sed libera nos a malo_.” Mrs. Danvers shouted. She wrapped one arm tight around her wife. In the other, she brandished a rosary.

“ _It does you no good_.”

The voice came out of Mrs. Maximoff, this time. Mrs. Danvers shuddered, tears dropping down her cheeks, but she held fast to her wife. Sheriff Rogers wheeled his horse over to face the two women.

“ _Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum,_ ” he intoned. He held a Bible in one hand, and Tony’s lamp in the other. The light shone bright white. Tony grabbed onto Mrs. Danvers horse and held his lamp. He didn’t know what else he could do.

“ _Small prayers. A church of two is no church_.”

Tony saw Sheriff Rogers and Mrs. Danvers share a fearful glance.

But that wasn’t the point, now, was it? It wasn’t that they had a big contingent of Catholics, or Jews, or Methodists, or gypsy-witches. It’s that they were here together, damned it all, united in their town. In Rescue.

That was it. That’s what was left.

That’s what Tony could do.

“Keep praying!” Tony hollered at them. “I have it! I know what’s left!” He grabbed his lantern and held it in front of him like a sword. “Ms. Rhodes! Mr. Howlett! With me!”

The two followed Tony without question, horses racing back to town. The lamps flickered as they passed, but kept burning. The dark was outside the town, still yet. Tony hunched over his horse and hoped and wished this would work. It had to work. He’d thought of it. It would work.

Mr. Howlett continued to drone on at his right, “ _Ki vanu vacharta v’otanu kidashta mikol ha’amim._ ”

Ms. Rhodes had started a new prayer, shouting it wildly as she brandished her lamp: “Blessed are the poor in spirit; the kingdom of heaven is theirs! Blessed are the patient; they shall inherit the land!”

Tony kicked his horse and gripped his lamp. He knew what was left. He knew what he could do.

They returned in not even five minutes, single sheet of paper clenched in Tony’s fist. He started reading from it as soon as he slowed enough to see the words straight.

“We, the people of Rescue, in these United States, recognize the importance of building a strong government through partnerships with citizens, neighborhoods, businesses, and institutions. We celebrate the vision of our great town as a community that embraces our differences and draws from the rich diversity among those who call Rescue their home. We respect and include the contributions of all toward the town’s vitality. We-”

Mrs. Maximoff’s body seized violently in Mrs. Danvers’ grip. Mrs. Danvers sobbed, face pressed to her wife’s hair, but her voice was loud as she recited with Sheriff Rogers: “ _Et in Iesum Christum, Filium eius unicum, Dominum nostrum_ -”

Tony raised his lamp high over his head as he continued to read: “-we agree here on this day to create healthy, safe, secure neighborhoods and workplaces, advance access to health, education, and economic prosperity for all. We affirm the importance of culture and arts to any great society-”

Mrs. Maximoff’s body stilled in Mrs. Danvers’ arms. _“-passus sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixus, mortuus, et sepultus, descendit ad infernos-_ ” continued Mrs. Danvers, fiercely, defiantly.

Tony glanced up just long enough to meet Steve’s eyes. They were gleaming brightly at him. He was smiling.

Tony could see him clear as day. Tony gasped.

The lamps were blazing, bright as the noonday sun. The townsfolk in complete were visible in that moment, all of them. Tony bent his head and kept reading.

“-and build local leadership and regional cooperation. Guided by these principles and inspired by our collective vision, we do enact this town charter-”

“ _NO_.”

The voice had no power, here. The lights burned brightly. Deputy Wilson stood from the ground, reciting “ _Sami Allahu li-man hamidah; Rabb'ana lakal hamd-”_ Mr. Howlett chanted “ _Baruch ata Adonai, mi’kadesh ha Shabbat_.” Steve and Mrs. Danvers were grinning fiercely at each other, intoning “ _sanctorum communionem, remissionem peccatorum, carnis resurrectionem, vitam aeternam. Amen_.” Hercules’ great voice boomed: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”

Tony laughed and stood on his horse. He stared his face into the blackness of nothingness and shouted: “ _Guided by these principles_ and inspired by our collective vision, we do enact this town charter, for Rescue, of these United States, to further the ongoing legacy of a representative, humane, and effective municipal government!”

A great clap, like thunder! A mighty wind, a _WOOSH_ of air and noise and sudden, violent _something_ , rushing in to fill the _nothing_. The townsfolk who had been standing were knocked into the dirt on their asses. The ones on their horses clung on, while their mounts bucked and whinnied against the assault. And then, in one instant to the next, nothing was gone. The night air rushed in. Tony felt a chill in the air, the wind picked up. His skin broke out in gooseflesh, and then: one drop. Two.

“Oh thank the Lord,” someone murmured off to Tony’s left. He tilted his head up, laughing, as the skies opened above them. It rained.

Mrs. Maximoff came to with a gasp and a shudder in her wife’s arms.

“Wanda? Wanda!”

“I’m all right, I’m fine-”

Mrs. Danvers wouldn’t even wait, she was kissing her wife through her tears. Mrs. Maximoff laughed but kissed back, turned half around in the saddle as the two women grabbed for each other. Sheriff Rogers coughed and wheeled his horse away, even as Mr. Maximoff galloped up to check on his sister.

Tony had his head tilted back, mouth catching raindrops. They were back in the world again. Whatever the hell that meant, whatever the hell had happened, they had fixed it.

“You fixed us,” Sheriff Rogers observed, awe in his voice.

Tony laughed, shaking his head. Water droplets sprayed from his hair as the cool end of summer rain started to pick up into something more substantial. The townsfolk started to laugh, and disperse. Tony fumbled for the switch at his belt, turning off the electric lamps. A gasp went through the town, but the lamps in their hands stayed on, and the original gaslamps flickered strongly, marking the straight lines of the town streets. Tony waggled the switch at Steve.

“We didn’t have time to bury the electrical wires very much. Electrical wires mixed with water will stop a man’s heart dead.”

Sheriff Rogers’ eyes went wide. “Oh. Well, good, then. Keep those damned things off.”

Tony laughed as he nudged his horse closer to Steve’s. “It can be made safe. Rubber casing. Buried beneath the ground. But we didn’t have quite enough time.”

“Understood, partner.”

Tony beamed, whiskers smiling clear up to his eyebrows. “ _Partner_?”

Steve flushed, rubbing one gloved hand to the back of his head.

“Well, of course. If you wouldn’t be minding…”

“I wouldn’t be minding,” Tony confirmed. Then he kissed Steve, and Steve kissed back. And hell if the whole town laughed at the two of them, blacksmith-drunk and war-hero Sheriff, taking up together. They’d just saved the town’s asses. The town could let them have this.

When they broke apart Sheriff Rogers was panting more than a Sheriff ought to be. Tony just smiled at him, a little drunk on love. And victory.

“Was that the municipal charter?” Steve finally got out.

Tony laughed. “In facting, it was. Seemed to work, didn’t it?”

“Can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself.” Steve paused, then scrunched up his face. “Though I suppose it feels somewhat sacrilegious, to put it on par with the Lord’s prayer.”

“That’s not what it was,” Tony told him. They wheeled their horses back towards town, angled to Tony’s home, on the outskirts. “It wasn’t that a government document is the same as a holy book, or a magical ritual. It wouldn’t have worked _without_ all the rest of you, bringing forth your own beliefs, your own holiness and sacredness. But none of the rest of you would have worked without it.”

“Well, clearly,” Steve agreed. “But why not?”

“Because of what it said. That we value all folks here. Of all sorts. That our strength is in our differences. That we came together and made something out of nothing, from all the somethings we brought with us.”

Steve smiled, getting it. “Because together we made manifest an idea.”

“Of a town.”

“Of Rescue.” Steve turned to Tony. “Our resident genius. We’re damned lucky to have you.”

Tony shrugged humbly. “It was all Mr. Mulligan’s idea. It just occurred to me how to speak it out.” Tony laughed. “And I felt damned foolish, with no words in my mouth, while the rest of you were chanting up a storm.”

“I can teach you-”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Trust me, I know it. And I know it’s not for me.”

Steve’s smile fell a little at that, but Tony nudged his horse closer, close enough that Steve had to steer his away, chuckling.

“You keep it for the both of us,” Tony told him. “And I’ll handle… what I handle.”

“Municipal ordinances?” Steve joked.

“Well. What better way do you think to tame the wild, wild west?”

**Author's Note:**

> Weird shout-out to the Kansas City municipal charter, which, uh, I cribbed a ton from??


End file.
